


Goodnight, Joel!

by BristlingBassoon



Category: The Watcher (2000)
Genre: M/M, Seriously this is the only way this movie makes sense, dream - Freeform, it was all a dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5553734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BristlingBassoon/pseuds/BristlingBassoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joel gives into David's seduction - or would have, if it weren't for all that dancing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodnight, Joel!

“Hey, you look like you could use a beer!” he says standing by the side of the gravestone he was using as a makeshift bar. 

I raise my gun in response. I’m not going to let the killer get away this time. God, look at him, that smug bastard, there in his leather jacket, leather gloves, sun gleaming off his black hair, that smarmy expression on his face. He took a pull on his beer, I could see his throat muscles move, his eyes close. That smug, sexy bastard.

“Come on Joel, I’ll put it down on the ground for you.” He does so. What an idiot, he doesn’t know me as much as he thinks he does. I don’t even like beer!

However I can’t argue with him that much. If I overtax myself I get a shooting pain in the back of my neck. My abdomen starts to spontaneously bruise and then I have to take 50 Es just to remain conscious. Of course the Es make me all slobbery, mindless and wanting to cuddle everyone. I have no idea how many people I’ve had sex with in the past month or so. I’m a maniac. I’m a sex addict, a pill happy junkie. I’m in far worse shape than David Alan Griffin, who is still standing there, glossy and lithe like a freshly-surfaced otter. He turns away from me and I can see the muscles in his arse flex. Goddamn it, couldn’t I be in charge of an ugly serial killer? It’d be far easier to hate him.

Suddenly and without warning, I begin to see everything in grainy awful quality. David becomes distant, blurry. Ugh, I feel like I’m going to throw up. It’s like being in a bad student film. I fall over without warning, my foot performing a graceful arabesque in the air on the way down, an arabesque made shoddy by the student film manner in which I’m seeing it. Bad music begins to pound in my head - I don’t know whether I’m imagining it or not.

David Alan Griffin pulls out a CD player. “I like to create my own soundtrack,” he says with a cheeky grin. Suddenly his eyes widen. “Joel are you alright?” He’s seen me writing on the ground. Student Film David runs over, and lifts me up, dabbing my forehead with a black silk handkerchief he’s whisked from nowhere.

“Who the hell are you, _Zorro_ or something?” I say with annoyance. 

“Just taking care of you. I don’t want to lose you.” His voice is surprisingly tender. I have no idea why he likes me so much. I’m supposed to be putting him in prison. This. Is. Weird.

“Ok, now we’re on a date,” I say, my mouth set in a grim line, “where are you going to be taking me?”

“To a warehouse. It’s got some nice candlelight. We’ll dance!” He sounds so exuberant. So..spastic. I begin to realise how stupid this whole thing is.

“Ok, fine, let’s go,” I say, feeling incredibly weary all of a sudden. I find myself handing him my gun. Never mind, it was made out of licorice anyway.

“Ugh, you like licorice?” David says, taking the gun from me. “You’ve got bad taste, my friend.” He ties the gun in a knot and hurls it away with merry abandon. 

 

David doesn’t seem to want me to feel out of control, it seems. Despite the fact that my vision still partially looks like film stock from 1919, and partially like a bad polaroid, he insists I drive the car. Luckily it’s an automatic and it’s about as easy to drive as a teacup on the teacup ride at the fair. Stop, go. I don’t really have to do anything, just spin the wheel, round, whirrily round, round round. I begin to realise I’m swerving all over the road. David probably has white knuckles but I can’t see them under his gloves. Ever the gentleman, he hasn’t told me I’m a crap driver yet.

“Why are you doing this?” I say, now in the rhythm of things, rolling my way down a highway. 

“It’s all about _Lisa_ , isn’t it?” David says with venom, and a sense of self-pity. “Why do you care so much about Lisa? Why are you always having flashbacks, or whatever you call them? I mean..Lisa...she’s tearing us apart. SHE’S TEARING ME APART!”

His anguished yelling takes me by surprise, and I nearly collide with an oncoming semi. David doesn’t notice. He’s still bellowing.

“YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, LISA!”

“Stop! Stop! What the hell are you doing?” I say urgently, gripping his shoulder, trying to stop up his mouth with one of the fluffy dice hanging from the rear vision mirror, anything to stop him acting like a hammy b-movie star, all fingers clenched and tearing at the air. “Do you think this is mystery science theatre 3000 or something? Just talk like a normal person, _seriously!_ ”

“Ok.” Suddenly he’s completely composed, zen buddhism in black leather. “God, no need to get upset. I was just trying to knock you out of student film mode.”

“You were _acting_ like you were in a student film,” I grumble. 

“Whatever. Anyway, Lisa. Why did you even care that much?”

“Jeez, no need to get all upset and hard-done by and jealous. Strangely enough it’s my job to stop people getting killed, and strangely enough, yes, when I fail I probably feel pretty crap about it. You might understand that if you weren’t so weird.”

He turns to the window, and is silent. I hear sniffing. God, is he _crying_?

“David, stop that!” 

“You-you-you...don’t... _love_ me!” he whimpers, his eyes all watery, his mouth wobbly. “Won’t you at least _look_ at me?”

“I’m _driving_. First rule of _driving_ is you’re supposed to look at the road.” I sigh. “Look, David, usually if you’re attracted to someone you, I don’t know, ask them out? Don’t take it too badly if they say no because they might come round in the end or something? You generally don’t kill a whole bunch of people as a twisted elaborate romantic gesture.”

“I’m a maverick. I never do things the usual way,” he says. I can’t tell whether he’s trying to be funny or not. “It’s not like there was a chance anyway.”

It’s bizarre, when I think about it. Looking like that, David probably could have any man he chose, but for some reason he picked _me_ , with my strange coloured hair, and my wide-eyed looking into the distance, my bad diet and my general grouchiness. I’m not exactly a very attractive prospect, and my greatest admirer is a serial killer.

“God, aren’t people like you supposed to be after Jodie Foster?”

“Not worth it, she’s a lesbian.”

“Oh I don’t know, some one else then. Not random FBI agents.”

He’s silent for a few minutes. 

“Do you even know where we’re going?” I say uncertainly, looking at the road growing steadily darker in front of me. 

“Erm...actually..no. I forgot.”

I sigh, an exasperated breath escaping in the darkness. “Ok, I’ll pull over.”

We’re at the side of the road, standing there, not meeting each other’s gaze.

“Joel,” he says, simultaneously seductive, shy, and with the smoothness of melted butter. 

“Yes?” I say with resignation. 

“You know how you take all that E? And what it does to you?”

“Um..yes?”

He’s unable to speak for a few minutes. Then finally he spits it out. “Ok, I’ve been keeping an eye on you.”

“I gathered.”

“Well..um..you know all those people who you had sex with?”

“What?” I say, with annoyance, even though I know with a sinking heart it’s true. I know what I’m like when I’m on E. 

“Most of those people were me.” He swallows. 

I’m simultaneously so appalled and angry that I can’t say anything; all I can do is gape at him with my mouth open. His hair’s fallen over his face; I can’t see his eyes. 

“Most..of those people were you? What the hell do you mean by that?” 

I suddenly realise that the terrible music he was playing in the cemetery has still been playing this whole time; emanating tinnily from the boot. I wish there was some way I could explode the CD player remotely.

“Well,” he says with a sigh, “I had to keep an eye on you. And hell, when you fell over, all jerking and mumbling and twitching around - I had to see how you were. And then..well..you started..coming on to me for want of a better word. I didn’t want to do it, but you just - Joel, your hands were never off me. I kept trying to sit you down, you kept touching my cock.”

“Can you not SAY that?” I squawk in outrage. The idea was absolutely absurd. He’d obviously taken advantage of me. Why would I want to have sex with him..even if he were good looking, and warm..and there..

From deep in my subconscious I have a memory of touching him, and I blush, remembering my hand against the leather. I somehow remember his murmuring voice, telling me to take it easy, to stop, that it wasn’t right, and hearing myself, panting, an absolute utter _whore_.

“Oh god.” I bury my face in my hands and exhale loudly. “This is the stupidest thing ever.”

“The worst part is, you haven’t even been _taking_ E for the past few months. I got worried about your..frenzied attentions, so I replaced them with sugar pills.”

“WHAT?”

This is all too much. Before I know what I’m doing I’m bashing my head on the escarpment and producing an angry screaming noise like a camel being kicked in the nuts. Or Alanis Morrisette. You take your pick. 

“Hey, hey, calm down!” The dangerous killer, the dangerous..ly _attractive_ killer, his arms are around me now. He’s warm, comforting, with the smell of black leather, and his _eyes_ , they’re liquid, like a doe’s eyes. Hell, who the hell cares who he killed? I can barely remember anything from day to day, maybe he never even killed anyone. 

I find myself putting his head up towards his, my hands gripping onto his shoulder, the small of his back, breathing my way towards his mouth, trying to kiss him, to taste the salt of our tears on his lips, when suddenly he breaks away. The moment’s killed.

“Hey, listen to that!” he says, with wonder. I groan. The CD player in the boot has now looped right back to the beginning of the CD, and David opens the boot, turns up the music and begins to dance.

There’s so little light that all I can see is his silhouette, jerking around spastically in a display of what may be possibly the worst dancing in the world. He dances even worse than a little boy who gets midway through a dance routine in the school musical, forgets the rest of his moves, and then pees his pants. His dancing is worse than a chained-up dancing bear. His dancing is so horrible I find myself unable to forgive him for anything. I can barely even remember how I found him so attractive, that’s how spastic his dance is.

“Joooooooooooooeeeeeeeel,” he says, drawing out the word so it sounds like a...silken oligarchy or something you could cold-press to get the oil out. “Dance with me.”

“Fuck no!” 

Before I know what I’m doing, I’m running away. Now this time it’s me running, and him chasing me, carrying the CD player, the terrible...terrible music still playing. He seems to have infinite energy, and he’s _dancing_ towards me, I just don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m going to be killed by this insane St.Vitus. I am so fucked. 

Nevertheless I just keep running as fast as I can. Suddenly the ground seems to rise up and jerk in front of me, and everything turns Student Film.

“NOOOO!” I cry, as I trip over. He’s almost upon me - I can see his black shining gloved hand reaching out, the other hand reaching into the sky in a victory salute, his leather jacket billowing in his dance. 

“I JUST WANT YOU TO DANCE-”

Oh god, it’s over. It’s over-

 

“Joel? Are you Ok?”

“What’s happening?” I groan, my vision blurry. My mouth tastes like a grain silo filled with steel wool or at least that’s the closest analogy I can come up with.

His voice is soft, a breath in my ear. “Darling, you were jerking and twitching around in your sleep. Is everything alright?”

Oh god, I’m so relieved. There he is beside me; solid and real, warm skin, dark eyes, hair rumpled from sleep, but I can’t help giving him a strange look, even as I cling to him.

“David, I just had the weirdest dream.”

“How so?” he says, concerned.

“Well, I was an FBI agent and you were this spastic dancing serial killer who was in love with me and you killed my girlfriend and gave me a beer in a graveyard and then there was a gun made of licorice and everything was a student film and then I kept taking all this E and it was _STUPID, so stupid!_ I don’t even know what the hell happened next!”

“I was a serial killer?” He laughs nervously. “Well I don’t know what that says about what you think about me but....”

It’s strange. David’s the gentlest guy I know. I mean, yes, he can be a little shy and a little awkward, but he’s the sort you’d trust with your life. And as far as I know he’s never danced.

“You also kept saying my name like James from Pokemon. Oh and the dream version of you listened to Rob Zombie.”

He begins to shake, crying with unstoppable laughter. “Oh god, Joel, I don’t know how your dormant mind comes up with this crap. You should sell the movie rights to this.”

“No, trust me. It was crap, so fucking crap, _no one_ would want to watch it as a movie, well..except to laugh at it. I mean, the stuff that came out of your mouth. So cliched!”

“What did I say?”

“ _we’re like ying and yang, Joel. You need me_.”

“Oh god, I sound like some kind of new age creep.”

“Well I hope I never have a dream like that again,” I say. “That was just...what. WHAT.”

I clamber out of the bed and begin to get dressed, wondering how long it’ll be before I’m able to look at David without giggling. That dancing. Jesus christ.

We meet eyes again and begin another bout of silent, painful laughter.

 

THE END. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this several years ago, just putting it up now. The Watcher is my favourite bad movie of all time - it strikes the absolute perfect balance of ridiculousness for me. As a consequence, this fic is..not exactly serious, but it also describes what to me is the only way the plot of this movie makes sense. Clearly, it's a stupid dream you'd have about your boyfriend.


End file.
